1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an apparatus for containing pollution within liquid drainages.
2. DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
Awareness of environmental pollution and increased governmental regulation of pollution sources has spurred a need for ways to restrain pollution from spreading once pollution has entered into liquid drainages. Such pollution can be oil products floating on water, emulsions, solids floating on or suspended in liquids, high or low pH materials, high or low temperature materials, liquid materials alone or mixed with water or any materials that are undesirable to have continue traveling down a liquid drainage.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,807 to Jones discloses using a combination oil accumulator-separator floated on a stream to contain and clean-up oil spills. The accumulator-separator is held in the middle of the stream and to both banks by floating vertical barriers. The stream current which is guided by the vertical barriers carries the floating oil plus some water off the top of the stream onto the throat of the oil accumulator-separator. The separator contains a bed of granular sulfur supported by a perforated plate. The supporting plate has nonperforated or protected channels. The oily water flows through the sulfur bed where the oil is coalesced and concentrated. As the water and coalesced oil flows out the lower perforations, the oil seeks the protection of the channels. The channels are tilted upwardly in a downstream direction toward a collecting conduit which is connected to a pump. The coalesced oil is removed by the pump and the oil-free water flows downward and out the perforations of the plate and again becomes a part of the main flow of the stream. U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,807 is primarily a device to remove oil from a stream once someone has discovered that a spill has occurred. However, this apparatus does not prevent all the oil from flowing downstream since some oil will escape while the apparatus is put in place on the stream. Ideally, an apparatus is needed which is capable of detecting the presence of pollution in a drainage, containing all the pollution before it proceeds downstream within the drainage and alerting personnel that pollution is being contained so that remediation measures can be enacted.
An attempt to create an alert device is disclosed by Anderson in U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,998. Anderson discloses a monitor for an effluent disposal system for preventing suspended solids in an effluent from clogging a disposal field. A separate monitor housing having an inlet and an outlet is installed in the piping interconnecting a septic tank and a disposal field. A screening system in the housing screens out suspended solids. As the solids accumulate on the screening system over a period of time, the fluid level rises, actuating a float operated switch connected to a means to signal that the system needs servicing. U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,998 is useful for screening out suspended solids in a sewage disposal system and alerting that the system needs servicing but is not well suited to monitoring for, and containing, non-suspended solid pollution sources in a liquid drainage.
Thus, a need exists for an apparatus which can be left in place on a liquid drainage and which will monitor the drainage for the presence of pollution. A need also exists for an apparatus capable of containing pollution once it has been detected in the drainage and for an apparatus which is capable of alerting personnel that pollution source is being contained so that those alerted can enact remediation measures.
Finally, in some instances it is not practical nor is it legal to permanently interrupt fluid flows. If the volume of liquid flow is relatively large, the upstream area required to contain a spill needs to be very large. Damming is not practical if the upstream containment volume is inadequate to contain the entire liquid flow. It also may be illegal to completely stop liquid flow on some streams and rivers due to state and federal laws. Therefore, a need exists for an automatic pollution containment apparatus which is capable of temporarily interrupting liquid flow while simultaneously containing the pollution, then resuming liquid flow once the pollution is contained.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an automatic pollution containment and alert apparatus which is capable of sensing pollution upstream of the containment apparatus and containing the pollution within the drainage in response to the sensing while alerting personnel that pollution remediation measures need to be enacted.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an automatic pollution containment and alert apparatus which optionally can be preset to simultaneously contain pollution yet still allow a liquid flow to continue or optionally be preset to completely shut off all liquid flow.